The story likely came as a shock to almost no one. A Tory MPP says party higher-ups advised him and several of his colleagues that if they pursued legislation to help a construction company, the party would see a resulting bump in campaign contributions. It’s an ugly anecdote, sure, but it’s also the predictable consequence of Ontario’s outdated and potentially corrupting practise of allowing corporate and union contributions to political campaigns.

The legislation in question is a Conservative private member’s bill that would release EllisDon, a major Ontario construction company, from a 55-year-old working agreement that requires it to hire only unionized workers. The company says that if it were forced to abide by the deal, which long ago fell dormant and was only recently rediscovered by unions, it would be at a significant competitive disadvantage.

The Conservatives and Liberals at Queen’s Park couldn’t agree more. According to Ian Robertson, PC Leader Tim Hudak’s chief of staff, the private member’s bill “levels the playing field by ending a discriminatory practice to create jobs and grow our economy, which is why it has received bipartisan support.” Maybe so.

Another plausible explanation: EllisDon is a big financial contributor to both the Conservatives and Liberals, with long-standing family ties to the latter party. That reason seems especially credible given the contents of an email, reported by the Star’s Richard Brennan and Robert Benzie, from Conservative MPP Randy Hillier to his PC colleagues. An outspoken opponent of the private member’s bill, Hillier warned his fellow Tories that the party was “on thin ice” ethically. He wrote: “In caucus, it was stated quite explicitly that following a successful EllisDon fundraiser for Tim (Hudak), our party would continue to benefit financially with the advancement of this legislation.”

Wherever political parties are funded by corporations and unions – entities whose influence governments are supposed to manage, not be managed by – the appearance of impropriety is unavoidable. (There’s no suggestion EllisDon acted improperly here.) Given the huge contributions all political parties receive from corporations, unions or both, how can we ever expect government to be truly independent, fully free of money’s undo sway? That’s why the City of Toronto, following the lead of Quebec, Manitoba and the federal government, banned the practice in 2009.

Critics of the idea tend to argue that forbidding these donations won’t fully weed them out; corporate executives will find backdoors through which to contribute. But surely that’s not an argument against trying. Isn’t an imperfect solution better than none at all?

The Ontario Liberals once saw it that way. In 2003, the Grits, then in opposition, promised if elected to mitigate money’s distorting influence on our democracy. “We believe that public decisions must be made in the public interest, not in the interests of a few well-financed political supporters,” said one piece of Liberal campaign literature. Ten years later, we’re still waiting for action.

Ontario is now an outlier when it comes to corporate and union contributions, holding to a position whose dangers our governing party once well understood. As money becomes increasingly concentrated among a small group of people and companies, the challenge of protecting democracy against the influence of wealth becomes both more important and more complex. But as this week’s news makes clear once again, the first step is easy: corporations and unions should not be allowed to buy their way onto the political agenda.

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